Is my plan for creating little sourdough correct?
Hi everybody,
I´m new to sourdough starters and I would like to get to know more about them.
I´m kind of a theoretical person. I need to understand the theory first, before I actually go to test anything in the kitchen :)
I want to create an starter to make pizza (and maybe, occasionally some bread too). But the conditions are these:
On one hand, I won´t bake as much and as often. And on the other, I really want to waste the minimum amount of ingredients.
I think the best way to achieve this is by creating a very small amount of starter, and keep it mostly in the fridge.
So I´m planning on building a very little starter (something between 10 g and 20 g)
I have come up with my own plan, but I´m not sure it will work
My overall plan is this:
1. Create a 10 gram starter and keep it on the fridge most of the time. I will feed it once every week (or maybe once every 2 weeks)
2. When I want to bake pizza (or bread). I will take out the starter out of the fridge around 2 to 4 days before the baking session
3. I will take out 8 grams of starter to build my preferment, or starter, for my final dough.
4. This will leave 2 grams of starter on the jar. I will feed this remaining starter with 4 grams of flour and 4 grams of water (following the rule 1:2:2) to rebuild the starter to 10 grams again. I will leave the jar out at room temperature for 2 or 3 hours (until the starter gets bubbly) and then, I will put it back on the fridge again.
5. At the same time, I will take my discarded 8 g of starter and I will triple its size by adding 8 g flour and 8 g water (following the 1:1:1 rule). I will mix it and leave it at room temperature for 24 hours.
6. The next day I will have a starter of 24 g (At this point, I can actually use this to make 1 pizza, assuming that one pizza needs about 20-30 g starter). Then I will add 24 g flour and 24 g water, mix it and leave it another day at room temperature for 24 hours.
7. The next day I will have a 72 g starter (this will suffice to bake 2 or 3 pizzas). If I need more, I can even triple its size again by adding 72 g flour and 72 g water, mix it and leave it at room temperature for 24 hours.
8. So the next day the starter will be at 216 g (enough to make like 5 to 7 pizzas!!)
9. And I can continue like this until i have the quantity I need for the recipe.
This philosophy is about as having as little starter as possible and discarding nothing (or at least, a minimum amount of stuff).
I want to ask all of you, seasoned bakers:
What do you think about my plan? Will it work?
Does it have a fatal flaw I can´t foresee? Did I miss anything important?
Do you have a better suggestion, or a better plan, that suits my philosophy of minimum starter/minimum waste?
I will welcome all opinions/suggestions about my ideas and my plan.
Thanks a lot!
Cheers!!
I'd recommend that you give this a look: https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/rye-sourdough-starter-in-easy-steps/
They have a similar philosophy in that they only keep a small amount of starter and build a preferment the night before baking. My 150 gr starter sits very happily in the fridge until I'm ready to make bread. When it's down under 50 gr I feed it, let it rise and then put it in the fridge again. I've followed a number of their bread recipes and they work wonderfully and it doesn't take 4 days to make a loaf of bread!
Thanks Paradiso!
I will take a look at that!
However, I still think 150 g is way too big starter. Isn´t possible to have a starter smaller than 50 g, perhaps 10-20 g as on my plan?
Or is it a minimum size for a starter? Would it be impossible to have a very small starter?
I wonder what´s the minimum size of starter someone has created?
especially if you bake with it often. but you don't want to build a starter from scratch that small. I keep a small amount of rye starter in the fridge starting at 120 g or so and use 5- 10 g of it every week to make some kind of SD bread. It can be in there for 24 weeks with no maitenane and no waste. When it gets low I just build it up again over 3 stages.
With you plan, since you need 10% pre-fermented flout in the levain to make a loaf of bread, I would take 8 g and feed it 8 g each of flour and water and then 4 hours later feed it 16 g each of flour and water and then 4 hours later feed it 32 g of flour and water. It should double 4 hours after the 3rd feeding at the 12 hour mark and be ready to raise a loaf of bread.. This would give you a levain of 100 g and enough left over to build the starter back up to some reasonable storage amount if you aren't baking a lot =say 30 g should last you baking a couple of weeks
Here is what I do.
No Muss No Fuss StarterHi dabrownman!
Thanks for your advice!
Let me see if I understand what you are saying:
Begin --> 8 g starter, 8 g flour, 8 g water
4 hours later --> 24 g starter, 16 g flour, 16 g water
4 hours later --> 56 g starter, 32 g flour, 32 g water
Then, 12 hours later I will have 120 g of starter. Is this correct?
If this is correct, shouldn´t I have more flour than starter when feeding it?
Other thing I don´t understand is this:
How much of this 120 g starter do I need to make a loaf of bread? 10 %? or a 100 g? or the whole 120 g?
Should I take a 100 g of starter to bake the bread and keep the other 20 g as storage starter?
How much grams of starter do I need to make a loaf of bread anyway?
starter is not the mother starter you will store in the fridge. The entire 120 g of levain will be used in 1 loaf of bread to raise it. A loaf required between 10% and 20% prefermented flour. The 120 g of levain has 60 g of flour in it and 60 g of water. IF you were using 10% for the prefermented flour in the bread then 10% of 600 g is go g of prefermented flour. So the entire loaf would have 600 g of total flour in it, 60 g in the levain and 540 g for dough flour.
If you wanted the 60 g of prefermented flour to be 15% of the total flour then 60/.15 = 400 g of flour total with 60 g in the levain and 320 g for dough flour.
You always are feedoig more flour than what is in the stater for each build. fornthe 2nd buuild the 24 g of starter made from the first build only has 12 g of flour in it and you are feeding it 16 g or flour. The 3rd build has 28 g of flout in it and you are feeding it 32 g of flour for the 3rd build
You build this 120 g of levain for 1 loaf of bread but you only took 8 g of starter from your mother to make it. If you have 100 g of mother in the fridge you still have 92 g of it left to build future levains for bread from it.
Another way to make SD bread is to take some of the levain you have made and save it for the next bread by putting it into the fridge for next week's bake In this case you would want to build extra levain say 20 g worth for fridge storage or you could take off 20 g of the 120 g you made levain 100 g of levain for the bread. Sine this only had 100 g of flout in it, if you wanted 20% prefermented flour for the bread then 50/.2 = 250 g of total flour less the 50 in the levain leaving you with 200 g of dough flour. But at 10% prefermented flour you have 50/.1 = 500 g of total flour less the 50 g in the levain leaves you 450 g of flour in the dough.
If you bake once a week then this method of taking some of the built levain and saving it for next week is a perfectly good way to bake SD bread. So if you keep more starter and take a bit from it each week to make a levain or build a levain and take some small part of it for next weeks bake - either way works.
Hope this helps
Thanks dabrownman,
I think I´m understanding more about this.
I read your --No Muss NO Fuss-- article. Very interesting indeed!!
But I have some questions I hope you don´t mind answer:
1. Why a 3 stage build-up for the levain? Couldn´t it be just 1 build?
For example, If I want to make a 120 g levain,
I can do it by following your 3 stage process as stated above. But I can also take just 40 g starter, mix it with 40 g water and 40 g flour, and leave it rise for 10-12 hours. At this peak point, I will also have a 120 g levain.
Isn´t it much easier doing it this way? Why go to all the trouble of feeding it 3 times over a 12 hour period when you could just feed it once and leave it 12 hours alone until it reaches its peak?
2. You say you keep a 100 g starter in your fridge. Is it possible to just have a 50 g starter? Or a 30 g starter?. I mean, is there a minimum amount of starter one must keep? How little the starter should be?
3. You said that it is not recommended to build your starter with very few amounts of flour and water. Why not? What are the ideal amounts to build my starter? Considering that I want to make it as little as possible?
4. You also said that 10%-20% of pre-fermented flour is the ideal amount to make a loaf of bread. That´s excellent to know!!
But I´m more interested in baking pizza than bread. Is there also an ideal % of pre-fermented flour to bake pizzas? Is the same 10-20% as it is with breads, or this % is different for pizzas?
Thanks a lot for the help!
The information has been very helpful!!
It allows you to have a very small amount of starter for the seed. If you have 5 g of seed and dump 60 g each of flor and water on it it could change the levain into something resembling a new starter on day one, Since the bad wee beasties are in the flour and it is the acid in the starter that keeps them at bay there isn't enough acid in the puny 5 g or starter to do so.
The other thing a 3 stage levain build does is it allows you to do something different at each stage. In my case i sift out the bran from the while grain flours I am using in the dough mix to feed them to the starter for the first stage of the evain build. This gets the hard bits wettest in the acid environment the longest to soften them so they donlt cut the gluten strands as much making for a higher rising bread.
The bran also creates a buffering effect that allows the LAB to keep reproducing and making more acid at a lower pH making the levain and resulting bread mire acid. For higher percent whole grain breads, the tang and sour can be over whelmed by the powerful taste of the who;e grains - this way the sour notes still come through
Thirdly, not only can the flours be changes at each feeding, sp can the hydration and the temperature of the levain at each stage to bring out the two acid profiles That the LAB can create - the sour and the tang; lactic and acetic acid production . The Detmolder method is an example of this
http://www.samartha.net/sd/procedures/DM3/index.html
Yes you can do a 1 stage build of 40 g each of flour, water and starter but then you have to keep a lot of No Muss No fuss starter around. There are many times, at least a 3rd of the time, I don't have 40 g of starter.
When i refresh my starter I do it to 100 g so it is only at that level for 1 week. I keep my starter for many weeks and use 5 -10 of it every week. Yes you an keep 50 g or less but you will be refreshing more often and that means work and work is very, very far from me.
The minimum is the amount you need to build a levain for a loaf of bread and take some of it off for storage for the next weeks bake. Since so many people who do this forget to take off a piece of the new levain and bake their entire starter leaving them with nothing, i suggest you keep twice as much as you think you need in case you forget like so many do. If you want to keep 10 grams for the next week'e levain build, then keep 20g so that you always have 10 g in the fridge.
If you use 5 g of starter and add 5 g each of flour and water to it to make 15 g of stored starter, you cant see what is doing - like rising 100% before yo store it - it is too small but if you build a levain of 140 g from 10 g of starter you know when it has doubled and you can easily take off 20 g of it for the next week.
Pizza is bread and the rule of thumb % is the same. I put some olive oil, fresh rosemary, fresh garlic and sun dried tomato in my pizza dough for extra flavor. It makes excellent focaccia and bread too with the same dough. I have made breads from 7% to 40% pre-fermented flour so the 10 - 2-% is a rule of thumb. If it is 86 F in my AZ kitchen and I am not in a hurry and want to develop as much flavor as possible I will use 7%. If it si winter and 64 F in my kitchen and I have little time but still want some SD flavor I might use 40%.
Happy SD baking
Thanks dabrownman!
As usual, your comments are extremely useful, and very informative and thorough!!
I understand more now about the benefits of using a 3 stage build.
There are still some doubts I have about your overall method though. For example:
1. If I understood correctly, you create and keep on the fridge a 100 g starter, correct? And then you start taking pieces out every time you bake (like for instance, 10 g pieces every time)
So you wait until your 100 g starter is reduced to a minimum, let´s say 10 g, and then you feed it and rebuild it to 100 g again. Then you repeat the whole process again.
Am i correct?
I mean, your approach is not to feed the starter once every week, like lots of people do. Instead, you simply let it there in the fridge and take pieces out of it every time you want to bake. Then you wait until it runs very low and replenish it when it has reached this critical level.
This is what I understand you are doing. Correct me if I´m wrong.
I´m also guessing that there´s a limit in which you can leave the starter without feeding (In you No muss No Fuss starter you say you can leave it without feeding for 16 weeks). In this case, if in 4 moths I have only used 40 g out of a 100 g starter. I will have to forcefully feed it and replenish it, even though I still have more than half the original stock. Right?
I wonder, how long does your 100 g starter last? How often are you feeding and rebuilding it again? 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks?
2. I´m not sure if I understand this right, but you actually keep and use three different pieces of a starter:
a. you keep you original 100 g starter on the fridge
b. you build a levain with a small amount of the starter (let´s say 10 g)
c. you also keep and store a piece of the levain?
From what I´ve noticed, you take 10 g out of your 100 g starter and build a levain, let´s say 120 g.
Then you use 100 g out of the 120 g levain to bake bread, and keep and store a 20 g piece of levain. Correct?
So you end up with three things: an 80 g starter that is on the fridge, a 100 g levain that was used to make 1 loaf of bread, and a 20 g levain that is also stored and refrigerated.
Why keep a 20 g levain when you can simply take out more out of the 80 g starter that is on the fridge?
Isn´t this like storing two starters?
3. If time is a constraint, and you can be on the kitchen every 4 hours. Can you use the 3 stage build-up method over 3 days instead?
So for instance,
day 1 = take 10 g starter, 10 g flour, 10 g water, mix them and let them rest 24 hours
day 2 = take the 30 g of new starter, add 20 g flour, 20 g water, and let them rest for 24 hours
day 3 = take the new 70 g starter, add 40 g flour and 40 g water, and let them rest for 24 hours
On day 4 you will have a 150 g of levain.
As you can see, it´s the same 3 stage build-up. But instead of feeding every 4 hour, you feed every 24 hour.
Is this ok? Can you do this also?
Thanks a lot for the help!
until it gets low and then i rebuild it, I do not take some of my levain I make each week and store it. I just said you can do that if you only want to keep a small 20 g of starter from week to week.
The main reason I keep the starter in the fridge for 16- 24 weeks is that at 36 F the LAB are outproducing the yeast at a rate of 3 to 1 but the reproduction rate is very very slow at that low temperature so it takes weeks and weeks for the LAB to yeast ratio to increase any perceptible amount. A normal SD culture has 10 times the LAB in it as yeast. i want to increase that to 11 -12 times so that my bread is more sour since I make whole grain breads for the mist part and a lot if high % rye breads where the extra acid is a real plus and keeps the protease enzyme action in check.
My approach is not to feed the starter for 16 -24 weeks..
If you are going to build a 3 stage levain over 3 days, then you ant to leave it on the counter for 4 hours after each feeding before putting it into the fridge and let it come to room temperature after retarding and before feeding it fr the next stage That should work fine.
I see...
Well, I was thinking building the levain for 3 days leaving it at room temperature the whole 3 days, without putting it on the fridge. I guess you can do this too, no?
So you feed the starter so infrequently because you want more sour taste on your breads.
If I don´t want so much sour taste, should I feed it more often then?
Because I want to bake pizzas, I probably wouldn´t want them to be too sour. How can I apply this approach of low maintenance starter and still, to not make the levain too sour?
Than follow dabrownman's way. His method is pragmatic, straight up and easy !
I think you are optimistic with the very small amounts you are intending to use, you will lose some to evaporation and probably even more that simply sticks to the spoon when you mix it up!
I too simply keep one starter (wholemeal rye) in the fridge and build from it for what ever bread I wish to make.
Don't over think this, just do it!
Hi chocksway!
Thanks for your feedback!
I thinks you make a good point:
I will have to take into account evaporation and what it sticks to the spoon.
How big is your starter? and how much of it do you use to make bread?
The key is to find one that's a good fit for how / how often you bake. For instance, if you use your starter at least once a week or so, you might consider a method that uses starter from the fridge rather than one that requires building levain before each bake.
Hi Arjon!
Yes, that´s what I want to do.
I want to keep a small starter on the fridge. And whenever I want to bake, I simply take out a portion of it, feed it for 12-24 hours, and then I can use it to bake.
As i have understood, even if you keep a starter on the fridge, you still need to revive it (by feeding it) before baking. Isn´t this right?
I keep ~150 gm and usually use ~100-125. After I take it out of the jar, I feed the starter with the same weight I took out (50/50 flour and water since my starter is 100% hydration), then leave it on the counter for a few hours before returning the jar to the fridge.
Btw, my jar capacity is only ~400 ml, so the amount of fridge space I'd gain by using a method that would let me keep a lot less starter is fairly small. And when I want to do a multi-stage levain build, I can.
So it's clear, I'm not saying this way is better in the absolute, just that it's what I prefer for the way I currently bake.
Arjon,
You say you feed the starter with the same weight you took out
But this is assuming that you take out at least half of what is on your jar (at least 75 g)
Otherwise, you starter won´t have enough food to maintain the whole culture, correct?
I mean, you can´t just take out 20 g out of your 150 g starter and then replenish it with just 10 g flour and 10 g water, can you?
On a hypothetical scenario, what would happen if every time, you only take out 20 g of starter to bake, and replenish it with 10 g flour and 10 g water? Won´t your starter die because there´s not enough food to feed the rest of the culture? There´s going to be like 140 g of culture with not enough food, and eventually they will begin to die.
Am I wrong with this appreciation?
I normally use 100-125 g of my 150 g starter. If 100, that leaves 50 so replacing the 100 with 50 g flour plus 50 g water = 1:1:1. If 120 g, that leaves 30, so replacing the 120 with 60 g flour plus 60 g water = 1:2:2.
When I occasionally use a much smaller amount, just replacing it isn't a full feed, as you noted. But it's easy enough to use more of the starter in another loaf (or for something other than bread). So for example, if I use 20 g for a multi-stage levain plus 100 g for another loaf, that's basically the same situation as using 120 g for one loaf.
I don't even have to make the two loaves at once. If I use 20 g one day and plan to use another 100 g within a few days or so, I seldom even bother replacing the 20 g.
Got it!
That makes a lot of sense :)
In the amounts we've talking about, 20 to 150 gm or somewhat more, they don't take up much room in the fridge. If you use stackable containers, the footprint doesn't even change.
Well, you obviously say that because you haven´t seen my fridge :)
You can´t even put a pin in there anymore LOL
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/350891#comment-350891
Hi Filomatic!
Thanks for your contribution!
I will certainly read it :)
I should add that I have recently made--and many really good bakers here swear by--dabrownman's stiff rye starter for longterm storage, above. This is good to do once you are up and running/baking, and ready for further experimentation.
Thanks Filomatic,
Where exactly can I find the recipe for making dabrownman´s rye starter?
Here it is, and another of his for keys to baking great and healthy bread.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/40918/no-muss-no-fuss-starter
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/43380/lucy%E2%80%99s-favorite-methods-make-healthy-and-beautiful-bread
Thanks Filomatic!
Some things I didn´t understand about the No Muss No Fuss starter recipe:
1. How do you make the seed on the first place? Where´s the recipe for doing that?
2. In the chart, it shows that with different seed weights, you can make an 800 g dough. I don´t understand how this is possible.
If the total amount of pre-fermented flour should be 10-20% of the total flour of the dough. The only way to maintain this relationship and make an 800 g dough, is by changing the water levels on every dough. Is this so?
Otherwise, I don´t see how it´s possible to make 800 g dough, with different levain weights, and still, respect the 10-20% pre-fermented flour ratio.
3. This is supposed to be a low maintenance starter. Does it mean that I only need to feed it once every 16 weeks? Or when the starter level goes as low as 10 g?
I'll let Dabrownman address his methods. As I said I'm still in the early stages of learning. as you can see just from the few links I've shown you, people have different methods for maintaining starters (and many keep multiple ones). These suit their bread goals and time constraints.
That is true :)